Father, Son and Holy War

Watched the documentary Father, Son and Holy War by Anand Patwardhan. Its a 2-hour movie with two parts : Part 1: Trial by Fire and Part2: Hero Pharmacy. The movie starts with the incident of sati of a Rajasthani woman, Roop Kanwar in 1987, communal riot after the demolition of mosque in Ayodhya and then moves to gender discrimination in Muslim Law with the second part centering around the manhood and machoism.
It is very difficult to believe that even in 20th century the sati is committed by the Rajput woman after the death of her husband. The documentary focuses on the blind belief by the people who were of the view that the dead husband attains spiritual salvation if the wife becomes sati and she is revered as the goddess. Even Roop Kanwar's brother quoted that he was proud of her sister because of sati committed by her. Was there not one rational person among the crowd, who was watching the event live, who could have stopped this act??
The film moves to the communal fire of 1993 in Mumbai after the demolition of Babri Masjid when the many Muslim shops were burned and Muslim people were killed while the police stood by without taking any action. Infact a Muslim girl very boldly says in the front of the policeman during the shooting of the movie that the policemen supported the Hindus while they were beating the Muslims. Now, if these policemen, who have been given the duty of protecting the citizens, watch the crime happenning in front of them, then how can we rely on them??
But the documentary also showed a Muslim family helping their Hindu neighbors in rebuilding the house after it was burnt during the riot. Is it not possible that we live in harmony without the notion of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh...............??
Then we watch a Muslim lady fighting against the gender discriminatory laws. Around 40-yr old Muslim man says that in the Muslim Law, women are given the second-class. Do we have to blindly follow what has been written in the old scriptures?? Can't we change the laws??
Then the movie moves to the second part . Hero Pharmacy explores the concept of manhood. We have been reading in History books about the Muslim invaders who raped the Hindu women , destroyed temples. A section of Hindu wants to take revenge of the crimes committed thosands of years back. They believe that non-violence is an act of impotency. They want to be real-men. We can hear statement of a giggling man talking about rape. "rape movie mein dekhne mein mazaa nahin aata. haqeeqat mein dekho to hum bhi participate kar sakte hain " (Watching rape in movies is not as interesting as watching in real. If ever we get a chance to watch in real,we will also participate).This was the statement made by him which would leave you shaken about the mentality of men.
Once in the movie you can see a Hindu leader telling his followers to have atleast seven children so that Muslims do not ever become the majority and the heritage of Hindu is preserved in India. The leaders are using religion and machoism as a tool of control.
The documentary explores that even today there is a gender discrimination. A lady says that giving birth to a girl is liking giving birth to a stone. Leave the males but don't these females who themselves give birth to the child are responsible for the suppression of their own community. During the movie you come across many facts that will keep you shaken. Do watch the movie if you can. But just watching the movie is not the solution of the issues raised in it. The movie is just to make aware of the happennings that we are unaware of. We are in the 21st century and still the thinking of the people haven't changed and its we who can bring about achange. But we can't bring the change until we are aware of the problems and we make others too aware of it.
For your information this documentary and other made by Anand Patwardhan were banned from being telecasted. But after about 10 yrs this movie got the Supreme Court order to be telecasted. Get more info on these documentaries here.